Cafe Offers New Pizza Topping: Locusts

An Australian cafe is taking advantage of an insect swarm to offer customers a locust pizza special, Australian national broadcaster ABC reported Monday.

Locusts have infested a huge area of eastern Australia roughly the size of Spain after recent floods, and are causing widespread destruction to crops.

Now a resourceful cafe in the northern Victorian town of Mildura has turned the tables on the pests by plating them up at the request of the local mayor Glenn Milne.

Milne confessed he hadn't tried the locusts pizza himself, but revealed at least one local had.

"I'm sure it's just as good as anchovies and olives," he said after confessing he didn't like either on pizza.

Milne came up with the idea after collecting a bag full of locusts, which have plastered vehicles in the town.

Chris Adriaansen, head of the Australian Plague Locust Commission, said the quick-breeding creatures had hit a region stretching from Longreach in Queensland to Melbourne and Adelaide -- about 190,000 square miles.